Migrating from Quandoo to a new reservations tool is not hard, but it requires method. Do it in the right order and it takes a bit more than half a day. Do it haphazardly and you end up with corrupted CSVs, broken widgets, and customers who can’t book.
Here is the 7-point operational checklist to move data, reservations and widgets out of Quandoo without losing a customer. It’s detailed on purpose — you can print it or keep it open in a browser tab while you work.
Before you start: what you need
Four things to prepare before opening the Quandoo dashboard.
An active account on the new tool. A free trial is fine. You need it to import data and test immediately.
A computer with Excel or Google Sheets. On a phone it’s painful. You also need software that opens CSVs without mangling dates and numbers (Numbers on Mac is the worst; European Excel auto-converts dots to commas — watch out).
One uninterrupted hour. Block the calendar. If you’re interrupted every five minutes, something breaks.
A backup of your website. Before touching the widget, back up WordPress / Wix / Squarespace. If something goes wrong, you restore in three minutes.
Step 1: export data from Quandoo
Open the Quandoo dashboard. Sidebar → Settings → Data → Export.
Download all three files separately:
customers.csv— contact list (name, email, phone, creation date)reservations.csv— booking history (date, time, party, status, notes)settings.csv— rules (deposits, no-show, services, hours)
Open each file in Excel / Sheets to sanity-check. You should see at least 1000 rows in reservations.csv if you’ve been live on Quandoo for more than a year. If you see less, the export is likely partial — retry or contact Quandoo support.
Save the three files to a dedicated folder on your personal cloud (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox). Don’t leave them on the laptop desktop — if the machine dies, it’s all gone.
Step 2: clean the customers CSV
Open customers.csv. Cleanup time — this is the most important step.
Remove duplicates. In Excel: Data → Remove Duplicates → select “email”. A customer who booked three times with three different emails counts as three records, but you often have the same person as mario.rossi@gmail.com and mariorossi@gmail.com. Those you’ll need to spot manually.
Normalise phone numbers. All with international prefix +39 (or whatever your country uses). Numbers without prefix need one added, numbers with 0039 need to be corrected to +39.
Check emails. Emails with typos (missing @, spaces, special characters) must be corrected or removed. A broken email on import becomes a ghost contact that will never receive confirmations.
Remove inactive contacts. Customers who haven’t returned in more than 24 months can be archived in a separate file. They don’t belong in the new tool. They take up space and skew your loyalty metrics.
You should end up with 15–30% fewer rows than the original. That’s normal.
Step 3: map fields to the new tool
The Quandoo CSV has columns with specific names. The new tool may call them differently. Map the fields before you import.
Typical Quandoo → Coperti mapping:
| Quandoo column | Coperti column |
|---|---|
firstName | firstName |
lastName | lastName |
email | email |
phone | phone |
notes | notes |
tags | tags |
vipStatus | segment |
If the tool you picked has native Quandoo import, this step disappears. Coperti, for instance, detects the Quandoo schema and maps fields automatically. If you chose a generic vendor, rename columns in the CSV manually.
Watch the date format. Quandoo uses YYYY-MM-DD (ISO). Some tools default to DD/MM/YYYY. If the format is wrong, all your booking history ends up in the year 2001 or 2049.
Step 4: import into the new tool
Time to upload. Look for the Import section in the new dashboard.
Start with the customers file. Do this first, because reservations link back to customers through email or ID.
After import, check:
- Row count: the number of customers imported should match the cleaned CSV. Missing 2%? Look for an error in the file. Missing 20%? Stop and investigate.
- Spot-check a search: look up a customer you know exists, verify name, email and notes.
- Check tags: if you had VIP-tagged customers, they should still be tagged.
Then move to reservations. Import historical data (no need to import future bookings — you’ll recreate them or leave them on Quandoo until transition ends).
Step 5: configure rooms, tables, services
While data is importing, configure the rest.
Floorplan. Most modern tools let you sketch the floorplan by hand or start from a template. Replicate your actual floor as closely as possible: rooms, tables, capacities, outdoor zone.
Services. Lunch and dinner with different hours, weekend brunch, aperitivo. Each service has its own policy (average table duration, max covers).
Deposit rules. If Quandoo had deposit policies for groups of 8+, mirror them.
Automatic comms. Booking confirmation, 24-hour reminder, post-visit follow-up. If the new tool supports WhatsApp Business, turn it on — it has the highest read rate of any channel.
This step takes about 30–40 minutes from scratch, 10 minutes from a template.
Step 6: redirect the booking widget
Careful here. The Quandoo widget is integrated on your site in three likely places:
- Homepage (the “Book” button)
- Contact or a dedicated booking page
- Google Business Profile (“Reserve a table” link)
For each, replace the integration with the new widget. Usually this is an HTML snippet to paste — the new tool provides it ready-made.
Recommended strategy: dual-running for 2–4 weeks. Instead of a hard swap, run both widgets side by side. On your site, “Book” opens the new tool. On Google, keep Quandoo live for now, so you don’t lose traffic. After 2–3 weeks, once you trust the new setup, shut Quandoo down there too. The full reasoning behind dual-running and the other strategies for not losing customers during the Quandoo transition is in a dedicated piece.
Always do a live booking test. Go to your site, book as an ordinary customer, verify everything arrives: the reservation in the tool, the confirmation email, the automated reminder the day before.
Step 7: communicate with team and VIP customers
The last leg is communication.
To the team: a brief training session, even 20 minutes. A server needs to know how to add a walk-in, move a table, read a guest note. Modern tools are more intuitive than Quandoo but habits are habits — you’re retraining muscle memory.
To VIP customers: a short email, not an official announcement. “Hi Marco, in November we changed our booking system. You can now book from our website (link) or on WhatsApp at (number). We’ll still keep table 12 for you like always.”
Non-VIP customers don’t need an explicit notice: as long as the widget works, it’s fine.
Common mistakes to avoid
After watching dozens of restaurants migrate, these are the four most frequent errors.
Migrating without backups. If something breaks during import, without a backup you’re stuck. Before each step, save. Before touching the site, back up. Before importing customers, re-download the cleaned CSV.
Skipping dual-running. Switching off Quandoo and switching on the new tool the same day is an unnecessary risk. Keep both live for two weeks, pay one extra month’s subscription, sleep well.
Not testing with a real case. Many migrate and think “OK, it works.” Then the first real Saturday-night booking reveals the SMS confirmation isn’t going out because the sender ID is missing. Test with real edge cases first.
Ignoring historical data. Importing customer names without booking history loses segmentation (who returns, who spent the most, who has allergies). A CRM without history is just a phone book.
Coperti makes migration simpler
If you’re eyeing Coperti as the destination, migration is designed to be automatic. Native Quandoo CSV import, automatic field mapping, free support on a video call.
Full operational guide at migrate-from-quandoo, full feature list at features.
If you’d rather talk to a person first, get in touch: we reply within 24 hours and we schedule the migration when it suits you.